I think you’re making too much of this. Don’t assume that just because it’s grating on you, it must be grating on most people. There is a reason “The Facebook” became “Facebook.”
I made no assumption of the sort you describe. I said that my reaction was significant Bayesian information (while admitting that it was potentially “overrideable”). I also pointed out that it was shared by other people. So there is no appeal to the typical mind fallacy. Furthermore, it doesn’t need to be grating to “most people” to be inadvisable; it just needs to sound wrong, or pattern-match to the wrong reference class of organization.
There is a reason “The Facebook” became “Facebook.”
Whenever two rationalists disagree, they should ask themselves which of them has the important information that the other doesn’t. Let’s try to apply that here. Which do you think is more likely: your noticing a usage pattern that I haven’t noticed, or my noticing a pattern that you haven’t noticed?
First, I’ll look at it from your standpoint. Facebook is a pretty well-known company, especially to people who are active on internet forums. So I think you should have assigned a high probability to my being aware of the way Facebook is referred to, and to having taken it into account in formulating my opinion. In other words, I don’t see why you should have any reason to expect that pointing out that the company isn’t named “The Facebook” (and nor does one speak of logging onto “the Facebook”) would have conveyed new information to me, such that my opinion should be updated.
Now, on the other hand, let’s look at it from my standpoint. In the linked thread, I had specifically discussed the fact that different proper nouns are treated differently with respect to article usage, and I had made a specific comparison to similar organizations with similar names (nonprofits with “Institute” or a similar word in their name). In particular, I had even dwelt on the fact that an initialism for an organization may be treated differently from the full name of the same organization; thus “MSRI”, but “the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute”, and numerous others. Yet this point was completely missed by Louie, an important SI staff member, who apparently thought I was advocating for “the SI”, XiXiDu-style. Thus I have precedent for the notion that intelligent people at SI are capable of not only entirely failing to comprehend my point, but of failing to notice standard English usage patterns that they themselves would (I suppose unconsciously) apply in numerous situations. This raises my probability that your comment likewise falls into this category of your not getting something that I get (rather than the reverse). When you combine this with the fact that you yourself have an independent history of failing to read comments, you can kind of see where I come out here: it looks to me like you simply weren’t aware of the level of discrimination in my discussion, which would put SI in a different reference class from Facebook.
Is this analysis wrong? I currently believe that if you saw language patterns at the same “level of resolution” that I do, you would update in my direction. Is there something I’m not taking into account such that, if I knew it, I would update in your direction?
ETA: Whoa! I just noticed the voting on the parent and grandparent: −6 and +8 respectively, within a matter of minutes. Luke, this is information. Update on it!
Your analysis in this comment looks correct to me. I hadn’t read this comment or this comment until now. My policy of not reading most LW comments is one thing that allows me to get so much other stuff done (there are enough people reading LW comments, not enough people writing research papers), but it does mean that I sometimes miss more informative comments like the ones I just linked to.
I will also say that your analysis in those two comments looks correct to me. Unless given reason to do otherwise, I’ll try to start saying “at SI” but also “at the Singularity Institute.”
I do wish I was able to find an official style guide that made this point clear, though. Do you know of one? I couldn’t find it in the Chicago guide. It’s sort of explained here, though it doesn’t make the detailed claims that you do. I’ve switched my practice mostly because my intuitions agreed with yours when I read your comments, but that could be just status quo bias and me being used to saying “The Singularity Institute” until recently.
Yet this point was completely missed by Louie, an important SI staff member, who apparently thought I was advocating for “the SI”, XiXiDu-style.
I never learnt this stuff in school and my current focus is on improving the math education that I missed rather than rules of grammar. I promise that I will teach myself how to write correct English in future. But right now I don’t give it top priority so I hope you will tolerate some of my mistakes for the time being.
I graduated from the California Institute of Technology. Grammatically, that’s the (State) Institute of (Stuff), and “institute” gets “the” in American English. (But, I graduated from Caltech—when contracted, the need for “the” disappears.)
Regional dialects differ—I don’t know about “institute” specifically, but for a similar example, British/Canadian/etc. English says “hospital” where American English says “the hospital” (I noticed this one in Deus Ex Human Revolution, set in Detroit but developed by Eidos Montreal.) It’s also not the case that contractions/acronyms always eliminate “the”: consider working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and working for the FBI. (Insiders will sometimes say “FBI”, “CIA”, “NSA” without “the”, but the general public always adds “the”.)
Facebook is a synthesized word, giving them more freedom to develop conventions around it. Similarly, if you went by Singinst, then avoiding “the Singinst” would be perfectly reasonable.
It’s also not the case that contractions/acronyms always eliminate “the”: consider working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and working for the FBI.
Yes, it would never have occured to me that “the FBI” could be wrong.
There are a lot of these. On ten seconds’ thought, I would complete “working for...” with:
the FBI the CIA the NFL the AMA the ADA (which isn’t an organization, but can still be an employer)
Using a definite article implies syntactically that the referent is uniquely referenced; it wouldn’t surprise me if there was an implicit status claim there, and if the resulting status negotiation was contributing to the (IMHO otherwise entirely unjustified) heat with which this nomenclature issue is being discussed/voted on here.
I think you’re making too much of this. Don’t assume that just because it’s grating on you, it must be grating on most people. There is a reason “The Facebook” became “Facebook.”
Did you read the linked discussion?
I made no assumption of the sort you describe. I said that my reaction was significant Bayesian information (while admitting that it was potentially “overrideable”). I also pointed out that it was shared by other people. So there is no appeal to the typical mind fallacy. Furthermore, it doesn’t need to be grating to “most people” to be inadvisable; it just needs to sound wrong, or pattern-match to the wrong reference class of organization.
Whenever two rationalists disagree, they should ask themselves which of them has the important information that the other doesn’t. Let’s try to apply that here. Which do you think is more likely: your noticing a usage pattern that I haven’t noticed, or my noticing a pattern that you haven’t noticed?
First, I’ll look at it from your standpoint. Facebook is a pretty well-known company, especially to people who are active on internet forums. So I think you should have assigned a high probability to my being aware of the way Facebook is referred to, and to having taken it into account in formulating my opinion. In other words, I don’t see why you should have any reason to expect that pointing out that the company isn’t named “The Facebook” (and nor does one speak of logging onto “the Facebook”) would have conveyed new information to me, such that my opinion should be updated.
Now, on the other hand, let’s look at it from my standpoint. In the linked thread, I had specifically discussed the fact that different proper nouns are treated differently with respect to article usage, and I had made a specific comparison to similar organizations with similar names (nonprofits with “Institute” or a similar word in their name). In particular, I had even dwelt on the fact that an initialism for an organization may be treated differently from the full name of the same organization; thus “MSRI”, but “the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute”, and numerous others. Yet this point was completely missed by Louie, an important SI staff member, who apparently thought I was advocating for “the SI”, XiXiDu-style. Thus I have precedent for the notion that intelligent people at SI are capable of not only entirely failing to comprehend my point, but of failing to notice standard English usage patterns that they themselves would (I suppose unconsciously) apply in numerous situations. This raises my probability that your comment likewise falls into this category of your not getting something that I get (rather than the reverse). When you combine this with the fact that you yourself have an independent history of failing to read comments, you can kind of see where I come out here: it looks to me like you simply weren’t aware of the level of discrimination in my discussion, which would put SI in a different reference class from Facebook.
Is this analysis wrong? I currently believe that if you saw language patterns at the same “level of resolution” that I do, you would update in my direction. Is there something I’m not taking into account such that, if I knew it, I would update in your direction?
ETA: Whoa! I just noticed the voting on the parent and grandparent: −6 and +8 respectively, within a matter of minutes. Luke, this is information. Update on it!
Okay. Sorry to have misinterpreted you.
Your analysis in this comment looks correct to me. I hadn’t read this comment or this comment until now. My policy of not reading most LW comments is one thing that allows me to get so much other stuff done (there are enough people reading LW comments, not enough people writing research papers), but it does mean that I sometimes miss more informative comments like the ones I just linked to.
I will also say that your analysis in those two comments looks correct to me. Unless given reason to do otherwise, I’ll try to start saying “at SI” but also “at the Singularity Institute.”
I’ve just made a $50 donation to the Institute in question. That kind of updating speed deserves an equally quick reward.
Thanks!
Now keep an eye on me so you can make sure I’m not just signaling rationality but actually changing my behavior. :)
Oh don’t worry, I will. :-)
I do wish I was able to find an official style guide that made this point clear, though. Do you know of one? I couldn’t find it in the Chicago guide. It’s sort of explained here, though it doesn’t make the detailed claims that you do. I’ve switched my practice mostly because my intuitions agreed with yours when I read your comments, but that could be just status quo bias and me being used to saying “The Singularity Institute” until recently.
Speaking of which, komponisto, I wonder if you could be so good as to back me up on this point.
Done (in part).
I never learnt this stuff in school and my current focus is on improving the math education that I missed rather than rules of grammar. I promise that I will teach myself how to write correct English in future. But right now I don’t give it top priority so I hope you will tolerate some of my mistakes for the time being.
It is grating.
I graduated from the California Institute of Technology. Grammatically, that’s the (State) Institute of (Stuff), and “institute” gets “the” in American English. (But, I graduated from Caltech—when contracted, the need for “the” disappears.)
Regional dialects differ—I don’t know about “institute” specifically, but for a similar example, British/Canadian/etc. English says “hospital” where American English says “the hospital” (I noticed this one in Deus Ex Human Revolution, set in Detroit but developed by Eidos Montreal.) It’s also not the case that contractions/acronyms always eliminate “the”: consider working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and working for the FBI. (Insiders will sometimes say “FBI”, “CIA”, “NSA” without “the”, but the general public always adds “the”.)
Facebook is a synthesized word, giving them more freedom to develop conventions around it. Similarly, if you went by Singinst, then avoiding “the Singinst” would be perfectly reasonable.
Yes, it would never have occured to me that “the FBI” could be wrong.
There are a lot of these. On ten seconds’ thought, I would complete “working for...” with: the FBI
the CIA
the NFL
the AMA
the ADA (which isn’t an organization, but can still be an employer)
Using a definite article implies syntactically that the referent is uniquely referenced; it wouldn’t surprise me if there was an implicit status claim there, and if the resulting status negotiation was contributing to the (IMHO otherwise entirely unjustified) heat with which this nomenclature issue is being discussed/voted on here.